Harlequin KISS August 2014 Bundle (10 page)

TEN

They were
at the first day-spa venue at nine o’clock the following morning. Jonah had left them to spend the morning checking up on Charter North, his exceedingly successful charter business, which he’d been neglecting to help the Tropicana back on its feet. He had a good second in command so he wasn’t worried, but he felt as if he should at least look in and check on progress.
He was to join them again for lunch.

The first two spas were attached to hotels and the managers were happy to show them around. Avery and Claudia had a manicure and a pedicure at the first one while Luke sat at a table with his phone and his laptop. The second one they both indulged in facials and again Luke had the phone glued to his ear.

They caught up with Jonah at the marina for
lunch. It was more of a business lunch with lots of constructive conversation about the pros and cons of what they’d seen so far and they were only interrupted once by Luke’s phone.

‘It’ll be interesting to see what the next place is like by comparison,’ Avery said as she sipped at an icy cold mineral water. ‘It’s a stand-alone and is
very
exclusive.’

‘More the kind of thing we’ll be
doing,’ Luke said.

‘Yep.’ Avery nodded. ‘I’ve booked us all in for massages.’

Luke frowned. ‘What? I don’t want a massage.’

Claudia thought if anyone could do with a massage right now it was Luke. He’d been working all morning at his computer on some crisis or other that had cropped up overnight in London.

Avery shot him an exasperated look. ‘
You
need a massage more than all
of us combined,’ she said and Claudia hid a smile behind her napkin at Avery in bossy mode. ‘You’ve been saving the world all morning on your damn phone, not to mention both you and Jonah have been doing some pretty hard physical labour these last couple of weeks. I’m sure there are some kinks that could do with some ironing out and I’ve booked it for you and you
will
have it and what’s more you
better bloody enjoy it.’

Luke glanced at Jonah, who also seemed to be having trouble keeping a smile off his face. He held up his hands in surrender. ‘It’s a massage, man. There are worse ways to spend an hour.’

Luke shook his head in disgust. ‘You are so whipped.’

Jonah grinned back at him. ‘That I am.’

Luke rolled his eyes. ‘I guess I do have some kinks.’

Claudia almost
spat her orange juice all over the table. Yeah, like groping and perving on sleeping women.

Avery beamed. ‘Atta boy,’ she said, reaching over and patting his arm. She flicked a quick glance at Claudia. ‘Just think, you’ll be all loose and limber for when you spin Claude around the dance floor tonight. Win-win.’

Luke sensed Claudia tense beside him. An echoing tension crept into his shoulders.

Looked like they both needed that massage.

* * *

When they arrived at the spa they checked in and were all given a tour of the facility. Then they were ushered into separate change rooms to undress and get into the robes provided in preparation for their massages. Jonah and Luke were shown the male change rooms. Luke’s phone rang the second his shirt was off.

‘You miss your
massage and Avery is going to be very displeased,’ Jonah said as Luke reached for it.

Luke looked at the London number on his screen. ‘This won’t take long,’ he said. ‘Go on without me.’

Jonah clapped Luke on the shoulder. ‘You know she’ll come in and get you if you take too long.’

‘Two minutes,’ Luke said as he pushed the answer button.

Ten minutes later, Luke stepped out
of the change room, swathed in soft white towelling. Despite his earlier protest he was actually looking forward to it. He was hyper-aware of the tension in his neck that had cranked up during the phone call and his muscles
did
ache from all the physical activity he’d been doing.

He’d become unaccustomed to that kind of heavy labour. Sure, he worked out at the gym regularly and jogged along
London streets in the early morning most days—he loved the pavements that ran alongside the Thames, even in winter—but he hadn’t been this physically challenged in a long time.

An attractive brunette met him. ‘Hi, I’m Sherry,’ she said. ‘I’ll be doing your massage today.’

Luke nodded. ‘Nice to meet you.’

She smiled at him and Luke got the impression she wasn’t going to find his
massage a chore in any way, shape or form. He smiled back. Jonah was right. There were worse ways to spend an hour.

‘This way,’ she said and gestured for him to follow her.

Sherry walked down a carpeted hallway with subdued lighting and opened a door to the right at the end of the corridor. She smiled at him again as she indicated he should precede her. A light floral aroma greeted him
before he even entered and Luke noted the subdued lighting extended into the interior of the room as he put his foot over the threshold.

Then several things registered all at once. The presence of two tables, one empty, the other with a person—a female person. She was lying on her belly with nothing but a towel covering her butt and acres of bare, glistening skin exposed to his gaze. Candlelight
glowed in the oil covering her body and a man worked said oil into the backs of her legs.

Claudia?

And then while his brain desperately tried to compute the images in those first few surprising seconds he heard, ‘Oh, dear Lord in heaven, that’s
soooo goooood
.’

Actually it was more a groan. She’d definitely groaned it.

Claudia
had groaned it.

He watched the male masseur’s
hands slide all the way up from the back of Claudia’s knee to the top of her thigh—a little too close to where it joined her butt for Luke’s liking.

‘What the hell?’

Even in Droolsville, the low growl yanked Claudia out of her bliss. She gasped as she half raised her chest off the table and then remembered she was wearing only a towel that wasn’t currently covering much of her at all.

Caught in flagrante again!

She lowered herself, looking over her shoulder at Luke looking better than any man had a right to in a white fluffy gown.

‘What are you doing in here?’ she snapped, heat in her cheeks—was she destined to suffer from a terminal lack of clothing around him?

‘What am
I
doing in here? This is where I was brought. What are
you
doing in here?’

‘Oh,
I’m sorry,’ Sherry said, looking as confused as the rest of them. ‘I think there’s been a terrible mistake. I thought this was a couple’s massage? Like the other two? I thought the other woman said...I thought you were...together.’

Luke glared at the guy whose hands had stilled on the back of Claudia’s thigh. The masseur removed them, eyeing Luke warily. ‘No,’ Luke said tersely. ‘We’re not.’

‘Oh, dear, I’m terribly, terribly sorry,’ Sherry apologised, wringing her hands, looking more mortified than Luke had ever seen another living person. ‘No worries,’ she said, ‘I can rebook you. It’ll need to be tomorrow—we’re fully booked today.’

‘I won’t be here tomorrow.’

‘Perhaps another day,’ Sherry the mortified asked.

Luke’s jaw clenched. ‘I don’t need a massage,’ he said
and turned to go.

Claudia frowned as a wave of crankiness accompanied Luke’s dismissive statement. Oh, no. Avery was right—he
did
need a massage. Now more than ever—
clearly
! And she’d be damned if she was going to be the one to stand in the way of it.

‘Wait,’ she said as he neared the door. ‘You stay and I’ll go. You’re working two jobs and long hours. You need the massage more than
I do.’

Luke stopped and turned to face her. ‘I’m fine, Claude.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I insist.’ She craned her neck around further until she could see the man whose fingers had been working magic until this rather abrupt interruption.

‘Can you cover me please, Marco?’

Marco went to shift the towel from Claudia’s derrière and Luke stepped forward on an alarmed, ‘No.’ Marco stopped
and shot Luke a puzzled look. Claudia was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind as well. But he’d seen more than enough of her skin for one day.

In the few weeks he’d been home he’d seen more than enough of Claudia to last him a lifetime.

‘You’ve had more stress than all of us combined,’ he said. ‘And besides...’ Luke glanced at Marco. ‘You
sounded
like you were enjoying it. Very much.’

Claudia couldn’t deny how much she’d been enjoying it. How much she’d been looking forward to a massage ever since Avery had mentioned the spa idea yesterday. And to deny herself Marco’s fingers would be a particularly heinous form of torture.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said, suddenly annoyed at him and herself for acting as if they were in some Victorian melodrama. It wasn’t as if they
hadn’t already seen each other in next to nothing. ‘The table’s here, Sherry is here...we shared a bed for years. Just lie down already.’

Luke was aware of the two masseurs exchanging looks. ‘We were kids,’ he clarified to Sherry. And then flicked his gaze back to Claudia. ‘I’m fine.’

Claudia glared at him. ‘And dandy?’ And then when he didn’t look as if he was going to give in she said,
‘You’re making me tense just looking at you.’

Which really wasn’t a lie. The thought of what he had on under that robe was making her really freaking tense. They’d asked her to strip everything off so she assumed he had too...

Luke held Claudia’s gaze for long seconds. ‘Fine,’ he muttered again. He turned to Sherry. ‘Where do you want me?’

Claudia wasn’t sure if he was being deliberately
provocative but she gritted her teeth as she placed her face back in the hole on the massage table and prepared to go back to her happy place.

Not easy to do with six feet four inches of pissed-off man right beside her.

Naked
pissed-off man.

Luke found it difficult to relax even under Sherry’s expert hands. Everything in the environment around him was conducive to a state of relaxation—the
low lighting, the essential oils, the rainforest music—he just couldn’t find it. All he could see behind his shut lids was big male hands on the backs of Claudia’s legs, slippery and kneading.

And they
weren’t
Marco’s.

Luke tensed even more as the deep melodic timbre of Marco’s voice reached him. ‘I’ll lift the towel if you want to turn over to your front.’ Claudia’s table creaked slightly
and he swallowed as he tried not to think about her turning over.

Do not think about Claudia naked and jiggling.

‘You’re very tense,’ Sherry murmured somewhere near his ear in the same melodic timbre that blended with the music and ambience.

He was pretty sure he heard Claudia snort. ‘My boss has had me working like a lackey these last two weeks,’ he murmured.

Another snort
from Claudia’s direction.

Luke smiled to himself as silence descended upon the room again. He wondered what the hell Sherry and Marco thought of
this
particular couple’s massage. He could just picture them raising their eyebrows at each other and shrugging their shoulders. They were undoubtedly more used to couples holding hands and bringing their own CDs of Gregorian chants than a couple
who could barely say a civil word to each other.

Claudia was grateful for the warm cloth that Marco placed over her eyes. She’d copped an eyeful of Luke’s broad smooth back as she’d turned. Sherry’s hands glided all over the expanse of him, and she was alternately turned on and jealous.

She could massage the hell out of that back. She’d been told she gave a mean back rub and Luke’s muscles
looked as if they were made to be kneaded.

Her heart crashed around in her chest as unhelpful images sprang to mind. No matter how hard she tried to let the drugging massage take her away, to concentrate on the long smooth strokes from expert hands, the image of
her
hands on Luke’s back—and his legs, and his chest—kept her well and truly anchored to the room.

To the man lying less than
two metres away.

‘I’ll hold the towel so you can flip over.’

Claudia tensed and held her breath as Sherry’s command to Luke seemed loud in the room. What would he see when he turned over? Another man’s hands massaging oil into her legs? Her bare shoulders and chest? The towel clinging precariously to nipples and just skimming her upper thighs? Her exposed legs?

A lot of skin. Oily
and slippery as his had looked, the flicker of flame casting a warm glow over it, bathing it in golden light.

Would it remind him of
that
morning?

Would he even look?

‘Just the back’s fine,’ Luke said.

Luke took a deep steady breath. The last thing he needed was to turn over. He’d spent twenty minutes trying not to think about the fact that a naked woman was having her body
oiled and kneaded right beside him.

And not just
any
woman.

Claudia.

He’d tried really hard not to think about them being alone at the end of this, all slippery and oily and essentially naked. He closed his mind off to wondering how much weight one of these tables could bear. And he’d definitely not let himself go down the mental path of I-wonder-if-these-doors-have-locks.

He’d got this far without an erection but he knew he had a precarious control on his libido and he didn’t trust himself to turn over and not glance Claudia’s way one more time.

His libido didn’t need that kind of trouble.

‘Are you sure?’ Sherry asked.

He’d never been surer of anything in his life. ‘Positive.’

‘Well, let me work a bit more on your neck,’ she offered. ‘I’m surprised
it hasn’t snapped right off your shoulders it’s so taut.’

‘Thank you,’ he murmured.

Because his head
was
about ready to snap right off. And he was damned if he was going to leave this room before Claudia did. He was keeping his head down and his face firmly jammed in the cut-out until Claudia and her robe had departed.